


First

by Elldritch



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Canon-typical background necrophilia, Content Warning: Ianthe Tridentarius, F/F, The People's Tomb Fic Jam: First
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:41:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26864548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elldritch/pseuds/Elldritch
Summary: Gideon is stuck in Harrow's brain with nothing to do but think.She thinks about Harrow and Ianthe.
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Harrowhark Nonagesimus/Ianthe Tridentarius
Comments: 13
Kudos: 93





	First

**Author's Note:**

> Set sometime between Harrow making Ianthe's arm and Dios Apate Minor

Harrow. The thing with us being the only kids on the Ninth, is that we were each other’s first _everything_. Simply by default. Anything we didn’t get from each other, we just didn’t get at all. You were my first enemy. You were my first friend; though, until that day in the pool at Canaan House, I never imagined either of us admitting that friendship - not even to ourselves, let alone out loud.

And speaking of things I was careful never to think about, Harrow, I think we need to have a talk about kissing. Kissing is something _I’ve_ thought about a lot, in my time. More than kissing. You’ve seen my magazines, so I’m sure I don’t need to go into detail, but I want to make it _very_ clear that I absolutely never thought about kissing _you_ …

… well, maybe once. Fuck, but you messed me up when you took me into that pool. I’m not even talking about what you said about your parents, and all the dead kids. Sure, that was the worst, but _I_ knew it wasn’t your fault, even if you didn’t, and your parents are dead now, so really, what is there left to do? Who is there left to punish? 

No. What messed me up that day in the pool was realising that you didn’t hate me. Not really. You just hated yourself, and I happened to be there. Until that moment, you hating me was one of the cornerstones of my existence; it was like you’d told me that up was suddenly down. Sometimes I forget - it isn’t easy to think in here, you haven’t given me much space in your brain - so I forget that you don’t hate me. Honestly, it’s easier when I do forget.

But look, I kissed you in that pool. Not a proper kiss, I just pressed my lips to the place where your nose meets the bone of your frontal sinus, and the noise you made… well. It’s a good job I didn’t try anything spicier, because that noise nearly killed me.

So I _have_ thought about kissing you, but only that once. I swear. 

Still, I always guess I kind of assumed, without really ever thinking about it, that my first kiss would be with you, and your first kiss would be with me - if either of us ever got kissed at all. What other options were there, unless you actually let me escape, which you never would? Most likely, we’d both go to our graves wholly unkissed, because in what world would I ever have let you get that close without worrying about you clawing my eyes out?

So, I’m sure you can imagine how I felt when you kissed Ianthe… _Ianthe_ … while I was stuck in your brain, an unwilling observer to every disgusting detail. Not just an observer - I felt it. I felt her lips, and I felt her tongue, and Harrow, I didn’t even have a body to vomit with. Trust you to pick that exact moment to stop puking for the first time in like, a month. The only thing which would have made that whole ordeal bearable for me was if you’d just hurled right in her gross face.

So - bad enough that I have to know what it feels like to kiss Ianthe, tongue and all. That’s something I would willingly die all over again to forget.

Worse, was the stupid feeling that something had been stolen from me. If anyone in the universe had been able to crack your chaste nun veneer, it should have been me. And if not me, then really, just anyone but Ianthe. Fuck, it would probably have sucked less for me if you’d taken a leaf out of the Saint of Duty’s book and decided to go to bonersville with Cytherea’s corpse. At least she’d been cute.

Do you know what’s really killing me though? What I can’t stop puzzling over? Harrow - was that _my_ first kiss? Sure, it wasn’t my body, but I felt it. Does that count? Did I fucking _die_ for you, and you repay me by keeping me hanging around so I can enjoy an afterlife of puking and kissing Ianthe? I think you really must hate me after all.

Yes, I have been obsessing over this for months. What do you expect me to do? It’s not like there’s much to occupy me these days. Especially now that you’re sleeping in her bed. In her _bed,_ Nonagesimus. Because you feel _safe_ there. 

I don’t know if you know this, but the dead don’t sleep - the whole time you’re unconscious, I’m there. Your eyes are shut, so I can’t see her, but I can hear her breathe, and I know she’s there. I know that she could put a pillow over your face and suffocate you and I wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. She could strangle you with the fingers that you made her…

And, by the way, don’t even get me started on that, because I know that when two necromancers get together it’s all licking bones and touching blood and stuff. I was there when you did it, I know what I felt, I know what _you_ felt, and I heard the noises she made - I’m ninety percent certain that making someone a bone arm is, like, fifth date stuff at the very least. 

It sucks to know that our first kiss was with Ianthe. If I have to consider the idea that we had weird necromantic dismemberment… rememberment… something-memberment sex (I wasn’t sure there was a word for what you’d done, but I’m pretty sure it would involve some sort of ‘member’, so… double yuck) with Ianthe for our first time, I will start screaming and I don’t think I’ll ever stop.

I’m your cavalier. I said the words, and I swore to serve you, and I gave my life to keep you safe. Ianthe is a back-stabbing cavalier-eating, lying, manipulative, little bitch. Also, I’m devastatingly hot, and she’s a stick with anaemia. How can you not tell the difference? 

All I can say is, Harrow, you’d better have some bloody good reason for keeping me around. Whatever you’re planning, you’d better get to it soon, because, if I have to exist like this much longer, I don’t know who I’ll even be by the time you let me go.


End file.
